On Hold in Panama City

2/28- 3/2/07 – We passed a brand new tanker this morning apparently pumping out its ballast, it was an enormous amount of water! We pulled into Panama City pretty early in the day so we’d have plenty of time to get the water pump and install it. One gentleman in the office overheard us asking for directions to a marine store and quickly offered up his friend to give us a lift; he only asked that we return the favor to another cruiser stranded in our home port. AH HA! That’s how it works! Pretty cool system – again, what goes around comes around. With a new water pump installed we had the rest of the day to walk around the city. It would appear that we are in ‘old town’ and it’s not very big. We were able to do two trips to the store and walk the piers checking out other boats. Some merchants appear to be working very hard at improving the ambiance of this general area; there are a number of ‘antique’ stores, various eateries and for some strange reason a large number of attorneys. Perhaps Panama City is a district seat for the courts or something.
Each time I look overboard more and more jellies become visible in the marina. There always seems to be some attention-grabbing creature to watch on this journey.
After watching the weather channel (It’s great to have cable TV) we’ve decided to hold up one more day here in calmer waters. Good thing, even here in the marina, which inside the bay, the waters are a pretty wicked chop. So we’ll take another down day and as they say ‘wait for our weather window’. After this storm passes, in a day or two, we expect to have nice weather along the intercostals for the next several days as we continue to head west!